Sino-UK ties herald golden time with West

• Buckingham Palace prepares for Xi Jinping visit

  

  President Xi Jinping's visit will also receive a warm welcome from the British Monarchy. Queen Elizabeth the second, who has met with some of the most famous leaders in recent history, is expected to greet President Xi at Buckingham Palace.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's upcoming visit to the UK is drawing increasing attention in the UK and in the rest of Europe. British Prime Minister David Cameron said both countries have entered a "golden time" in their ties, a high-profile exhibition of Britain's willingness to be China's "best partner in the West."



Cameron's meeting with the Dalai Lama in 2012 was a turning point in Sino-UK relations. For 18 months, Beijing gave London the cold shoulder, while at the same time developing cordial relationships with Germany and France. The low ebb in bilateral ties happened when Europe was deeply troubled. Although China had struggled with Germany and France over the same problem in 2007 and 2008, by 2012, China was much stronger and was deemed more influential. Now, China has become more attractive to Europe than ever, and that has served to transform the foundation of China-EU relations.

The UK has shown its adept diplomatic skills while re-calibrating its relationship with China. It was the first European nation to announce that it had applied to join the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank, an international financial institution proposed by China. This decision thawed the previous discord. Since then, the UK has committed itself to turning London into the biggest offshore yuan center other than Hong Kong. Cameron has received Ren Zhengfei, president of Huawei, one of China's biggest telecommunications companies. He also invited Chinese companies to invest in a new nuclear power station project. Such actions have set examples in Europe.

As an old empire, the UK has declined, but its foundation is solid. With a special relationship with the US, London knows how to communicate with Washington over China issues.

London making a friendly gesture to China shows that Western countries are trying to redress their deep-rooted political prejudices and explore more potential to develop relations with China.

To a large extent, London's friendliness toward China stems from the pursuit of more benefits, but it shows that the spillover of China's development in many respects has become an irresistible attraction. Nothing can guarantee that country-to-country relations will develop on a certain course without having to worry about derailment. So far, historical experience has shown us that the bond of interests is one of the most reliable mechanisms that can maintain a reciprocal bilateral relationship.

China and the UK need each other. As the US is becoming weaker in exporting interests to Europe, China is providing more opportunities to the UK, while China also needs a Western country to set an example for a new China-West relationship.

It must be noted that political and ideological misunderstandings will remain a challenge for both sides. How to deal with them is a long-term issue.- Global Times

China - US candid dialogue aims at easing anxiety

China-US S&ED: Over 90 outcomes to boost China-US relations

China and the United States have achieved over ninety outcomes from the 6th Strategic and Economic D...

China-U.S. annual dialogue opens, President Xi gives speech

The sixth round of China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue has opened here in Beijing. The two-day ...

The sixth round of China-US Strategic and Economic Dialogue and the fifth China-US High-Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange are being held in Beijing these two days. At a time when this bilateral relationship remains subtle and both have speculated about each other's strategic outlook, such high-level dialogue offers a chance for them to listen to their counterparts to ease anxieties brought by problems between them.

The strategists and public opinion in both countries have made thorough analyses of bilateral ties, yet they still fail to offer grounded conclusions. The fundamental reason is that in the history of international politics, such a big power relationship has never existed before.

The Chinese leadership envisioned the notion of a new type of great power relations, which the US leadership has accepted. The positive attitude of both has injected hope to the 21st century.

There will be more friction between the two. There will be twists and turns as China rises and the US tries to maintain its hegemony. Both can easily highlight a concrete problem, while high-level dialogue is needed to ease the speculation in both societies.

China's rise seems to be the most uncertain factor for the Sino-US relationship and the political pattern of the Asia-Pacific region in the 21st century. A comprehensive understanding of China's rise will help lay the foundation of this bilateral relationship.

The driving forces of China's rise come from the demand of the Chinese people. No one can stop this process. China and the US should build up an open system that can accommodate China's rise and soften the impact of China's rise on the politics of Asia-Pacific and other regions.

Many view the territorial disputes between China and its neighboring countries as its ambition for expansion. The US should be able to see that China has no intention to create new geopolitical patterns through these disputes, nor would it make use of the conflicts to expand its strategic space.

Even when China has no intention, its impact has been felt. Meanwhile, US support for Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam has caused some effect on China's neighbors. These two factors should not interact with each other to intensify mutual strategic mistrust.

The significance of the heart-to-heart dialogue is the same as that of establishing a crisis-management mechanism. It may take a while before the two realize great power relations, but China-US relations are fundamentally different from ties between the US and the former Soviet Union.

There will be continuing pessimistic comments from the public in both countries. It is vital that both governments remain determined. It will be a significant political achievement if the two develop a relationship that is different from the one under the Yalta system during the last century.

Source:Global Times Published: 2014-7-9

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US and China tussle for trade dominance at Apec summit

United States stepped up efforts to reinforce its economic might in the Asia-Pacific at a regional leaders’ summit in Indonesia on Tuesday, amid warnings from an increasingly bold China.


US Secretary of State John Kerry. Photo: EPA 

The two-day Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (Apec) event at a five-star resort on the tropical island of Bali is aimed at breaking down trade barriers among all 21 member economies, but rival agendas by the world powers have overshadowed the talks.

Filling in for US President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry has lobbied for the quick signing of a mega free trade pact grouping 12 Apec nations but not China and summit host Indonesia.

“We need modern rules for a changing road, rules that keep pace with the speed of today’s markets,” Kerry said in a speech on the sidelines of the summit on Monday that was in large part a hard-sell for the planned Trans-Pacific Partnership.

China's President Xi Jinping, Photo: AFP

Kerry was set to meet the leaders of the 11 other nations involved in the TPP on Tuesday afternoon in a bid to hit an against-the-odds deadline set by Obama for a deal by the end of this year.

The United States has championed the TPP as setting “gold standards” to deal with complex changes to the 21st-century economy, such as how to police cloud computing and patents.

But China and even some developing nations included in the TPP have expressed concern that it will set down trade rules primarily benefiting the richest countries and most powerful firms.

“China will commit itself to building a trans-Pacific regional cooperation framework that benefits all parties,” Chinese President Xi Jinping said in a speech following Kerry at the Apec business forum

“We should enhance coordination... deepen regional integration and avoid the spaghetti bowl effect so as to build closer partnerships across the Pacific.

China will commit itself to building a trans-Pacific regional cooperation framework that benefits all parties -China's President Xi Jinping

Xi’s comments were interpreted in China’s state-run media on Tuesday as direct criticism of the TPP.

“The Trans-Pacific Partnership, featuring confidential talks and the highest free trade standard beyond mere lower tariffs, is widely considered a new step for the US to dominate the economy in the Asia-Pacific region,” the China Daily newspaper said in a front-page report on Xi’s speech.

Indonesia also signalled its irritation at the huge focus on TPP at the Apec summit, shunting the planned meeting on Tuesday afternoon of the 12 nations involved to a hotel outside the official venue.

“We mind actually, and one of the reasons, at the very least, is we don’t want any coverage that will overshadow APEC,” an Indonesian government official said, when asked about why the TPP countries had been told to meet outside.

Meanwhile, China and Indonesia are involved in plans for a rival free trade pact involving 16 countries around the region and being spearheaded by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.

Negotiations for that pact are expected to be discussed at an East Asia Summit in Brunei this week.

One of the biggest issues at Apec has been the absence of Obama, who had to cancel an Asian tour that would have also taken him to Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines because of the week-long US government shutdown.

Obama and the Democrats are engaged in a potentially catastrophic battle of nerves with the Republicans over the president’s health care law, which could lead to an unprecedented US default.

Obama’s decision not to come to Asia has reinforced sentiments that his high-profile diplomatic, economic and military focus on the region, known as the “pivot”, is in tatters.

Kerry has been forced at Apec to repeatedly insist that the Asia-Pacific remains a top priority.

“I want to emphasise that there is nothing that will shake the commitment of the rebalance to Asia that President Obama is leading,” Kerry told the business forum on Monday.

Meanwhile, Xi filled the Obama vacuum with high-profile state visits to Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur ahead of Apec.

He then used the Apec business event to outline a Chinese vision for the region of a “united and prosperous” family.

Sources: AFP

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A new dawn in world economy?

Review by Thomas Lee tomlee48@gmail.com

A new dawn in world economy?
Title: Uprising
Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy?
Author: George Magnus
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Ltd

At first glance, the title Uprising gives one the impression that the book is concerned about rebellion or revolt, or matters related to violent political conflicts involving armed resistance.

However, after reading its small-print sub-title Will Emerging Markets Shape or Shake the World Economy? and a quick browsing through its content, one realises that the book is actually an in-depth analysis of the contemporary global economy, in particular the influence and impact of the new emerging markets with the focus on the shift of economic power from the West to the Orient, especially China.

Its author George Magnus is a prominent investment banker and global economist, who has been acknowledged as the key analyst who had predicted the recent world financial crisis in early 2007. He is a senior economic adviser at the UBS Investment Bank in London, and had held similar posts at the Union Bank of Switzerland and SG Warnurg.

Magnus is also a popular and respected public commentator on world financial matters, contributing frequently to the Financial Times of London, the BBC, Bloomberg, the CNBC and several other prominent economic, business or financial publications. He is also author of the 2008 definitive international economic analytical book The Age of Aging: How Demographics are Changing the Global Economy and Our World. 

Hence, Uprising is not simply any ordinary run-of-the-mill book, but a major authoritative book which anyone concerned with the contemporary global economy and the direction it is moving should read and reflect deeply on. What Magnus said in his book should not be treated lightly as he is no false prophet when it comes to matters of international economic wheeling and dealing.



Magnus begins his book with an incisive narration and analysis of the world events building up from the first year of the new 21st century to the current global economic scenario. He gives a sharp observation, and penetrating and critical analysis of events in China, including the implications of a world sporting event like the August 2008 China Olympic Games, which took place sandwiched between the May 2008 Great Sichuan Earthquake which claimed nearly 70,000 lives, and the October 2008 world financial earthquake following the collapse of the US investment bank Lehman Brothers, which, as Magnus puts it, “brought the world economy to the brink of an economic Armageddon, unrivalled since the Great Depression of the 1930s”.

In his 358-page book, Magnus sets out to explain the impact and effect that the 2008 financial crisis has on the major emerging markets, and why the rich developed Western nations is going all out to challenge and curb their increasing threats, especially of China and India, in the global economic order.

A major theme of the book as Magnus puts it, is that “the West’s financial crisis sparked a major change in the structure of the world economy, and that China’s capacity to also embark on structural change voluntarily is weak, unless it is specially geared to the long-run interests of the Communist Party’s grip on power”.

This authoritative definitive book examines the two major economic powers and leading emerging markets in Asia – China and India – and several minor but significant markets in Eastern Europe, and also Turkey.
Currently, the emerging markets are headline news. And the question uppermost in the minds of political and business leaders in all these emerging markets of the world is what will happen following the 2008 world financial crisis and what does the future mean and hold for global finance, trade and commerce.

Magnus provides significant suggestions and pragmatic guidelines to resolve this global economic dilemma.

He presents a persuasive and cogent perspective on China and the other emerging markets from a post-financial crisis situation, urging those with economic potency to seriously reconsider their attitude and approach to the emerging new world economic order. A fundamental matter to critically and analytically examine is the question of what economic reforms are needed to meet the new global goals.

Magnus should most be appreciated for offering a convincing critical analysis of what the future global economy may look like – not merely for the emerging markets, but for policy-makers, businesses, financiers, investors, economists, and even ordinary citizens concerned with the economic well-being of their nation and the world.

Magnus deals with matters such as climate change, commodity prices, and world demographic trends, and gives valuable insights into the implications of these issues for the world economy.

One significant question Magnus deals with is whether the 21st century belongs to China. The Communist nation operating on enterprise capitalism for the last 30 years is now all set to regain what Magnus has pointed out in his book as its premier economic power it held from ancient times till the early part of the 19th century.

For all intent and purpose, China is set for an economic renaissance. It will soon regain its ancient mantle as a world economic power it lost when its reticent conservative bureaucracy forced it into international relation isolation while Europe moved economically forward with an industrial revolution in the 19th century.

The Uprising by the plucky economic seer Magnus is certainly essential reading for anyone who wants to understand and care about the future of the global economy.

Understanding the context, content and challenges of the world economic scenario during the first decade of this century is certainly vital for those responsible for making policies, plans and programmes to chart the direction, set the trend, and strive for vigorous economic success in their nations.

Thanks to Magnus, his book has provided the seeds for the planting, growing and harvesting of serious objective thinking, critical pragmatic evaluation, constructive practical ideas, and effective and efficient creative implementation of economic policies, plans and programmes.

Understanding The Rise Of China [VIDEO]

http://www.dump.com/2011/01/25/understanding-the-rise-of-china-video/